Updates the schema of a Cloud Spanner database by creating/altering/dropping tables, columns, indexes, etc. The returned long-running operation will have a name of the format<database_name>/operations/<operationId>and can be used to track execution of the schema changes. The metadata field type isUpdateDatabaseDdlMetadata. The operation has no response.
Required. DDL statements to be applied to the database.
operationId
string
If empty, the new update request is assigned an automatically-generated operation ID. Otherwise,operationIdis used to construct the name of the resulting Operation.
Specifying an explicit operation ID simplifies determining whether the statements were executed in the event that thedatabases.updateDdlcall is replayed, or the return value is otherwise lost: thedatabaseandoperationIdfields can be combined to form thenameof the resulting longrunning.Operation:<database>/operations/<operationId>.
operationIdshould be unique within the database, and must be a valid identifier:[a-z][a-z0-9_]*. Note that automatically-generated operation IDs always begin with an underscore. If the named operation already exists,databases.updateDdlreturnsALREADY_EXISTS.
Optional. Proto descriptors used by CREATE/ALTER PROTO BUNDLE statements. Contains a protobuf-serializedgoogle.protobuf.FileDescriptorSet. To generate it,installand runprotocwith --include_imports and --descriptor_set_out. For example, to generate for moon/shot/app.proto, run
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Hard to understand","hardToUnderstand","thumb-down"],["Incorrect information or sample code","incorrectInformationOrSampleCode","thumb-down"],["Missing the information/samples I need","missingTheInformationSamplesINeed","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-07-23 UTC."],[],[],null,["# Method: projects.instances.databases.updateDdl\n\n- [HTTP request](#body.HTTP_TEMPLATE)\n- [Path parameters](#body.PATH_PARAMETERS)\n- [Request body](#body.request_body)\n - [JSON representation](#body.request_body.SCHEMA_REPRESENTATION)\n- [Response body](#body.response_body)\n- [Authorization scopes](#body.aspect)\n- [Try it!](#try-it)\n\nUpdates the schema of a Cloud Spanner database by creating/altering/dropping tables, columns, indexes, etc. The returned long-running operation will have a name of the format `\u003cdatabase_name\u003e/operations/\u003coperationId\u003e` and can be used to track execution of the schema changes. The metadata field type is [UpdateDatabaseDdlMetadata](/spanner/docs/reference/rest/v1/UpdateDatabaseDdlMetadata). The operation has no response.\n\n### HTTP request\n\nChoose a location: \nglobal europe-west8 me-central2 us-central1 us-central2 us-east1 us-east4 us-east5 us-south1 us-west1 us-west2 us-west3 us-west4 us-west8 us-east7 \n\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\nThe URLs use [gRPC Transcoding](https://google.aip.dev/127) syntax.\n\n### Path parameters\n\n### Request body\n\nThe request body contains data with the following structure:\n\n### Response body\n\nIf successful, the response body contains an instance of [Operation](/spanner/docs/reference/rest/v1/projects.instanceConfigs.operations#Operation).\n\n### Authorization scopes\n\nRequires one of the following OAuth scopes:\n\n- `https://www.googleapis.com/auth/spanner.admin`\n- `https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-platform`\n\nFor more information, see the [Authentication Overview](/docs/authentication#authorization-gcp)."]]
